Archive for October, 2009

With a name like “The Mile High Club,” should I expect notes on a song by Bow Wow Wow or a Liz Phair video? Knowing it’s an anthology of erotic short stories, I have a few ideas: sexy stewardesses in skintight skirts, proud pilots with prodigious… pants. Of course, I could be wrong.

The anthology edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel is more than pilots and stewardesses, although they do feature in a few stories. Most of the stories involve passengers. Lavatory trysts, alluded to on the cover of the book, are pretty common, though the authors get pretty inventive. Another common method for sex in the sky involves passengers seated next to each other while covered by a common blanket. However, these illicit affairs are unneeded in a couple of stories, such as “Flights of Fancy”, which features an airline devoted to sex, and “Get On, Get Off” which introduces the idea of Masturbation Class.

Getting away from the airlines, we are presented with “Bermuda Triangle” which features a female flight instructor and two male students who do everything she says. “Wing Walker” takes the idea of sex in flight to a new level, when a couple engages in activities on the top wing of a biplane. One story, “Planes, Trains, and Banana Seat Bicycles,” doesn’t involve sex in the skies. While it is a great story, it seems a bit out of place in this book.

All of the stories are good or great. Although they only averaged about 10 – 12 pages each, these nineteen sexy short stories only scratched the surface of the Mile High Club concept. I hope to see follow-up anthologies, because I think there is a lot of uncharted territory in this area. Maybe in the future we can read stories with helicopters. Flying boats. Dirigibles!